


It's Dark and It's Matter

by tangereen



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: I Am Sorry, Other, Pining, SCHOOL IS HELL RIGHT NOW AND I HAVE NO TIME, THIS IS CURRENTLY ON HIATUS, WILL START UPDATING AGAIN IN DECEMBER, but also i'm a theorist and i don't know how experiments work, can experimentalists and theorists finally get along?, cass is an experimentalist, cassmako physics grad students au, get ready to find out, how much actual science am I allowed to put in a fic before it stops being a fic?, mako is a theorist, particle physics, set in a combination of counter/weight and my home town and my grad school, shout out to axions, the experiment is just admx at uw, the title is from my favorite joke whenever someone asks me what dark matter is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-08-20 16:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20230573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangereen/pseuds/tangereen
Summary: "But what really is dark matter?" Cass asked the audience, setting Mako up for the terrible joke he'd talked them into including.Mako's grin widened. "Well, it's dark and it's matter!" He paused for a laugh that, in their rehearsals, had been a lot louder and longer.---In the Godlove-September axion dark matter research group, two graduate students can't seem to get along. Mako Trig, Maryland September's star theorist, and Cassander Timaeus Berenice, Orth Godlove's prized experimentalist, seem to be endlessly bickering about who broke what (Mako did) and who did what calculation wrong (Mako did) and who set back Cass' career (Mako did). But is there a covert care concealed by the constant quarreling? Yes. Yes, there is. It is fan-fiction, after all.





	1. Superconducting QUantum Interference Device

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nextyear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextyear/gifts).

> I wrote this for nextyear. you should really go read her work "and they were roommates" instead of this, it's much much better

“NO MAKOS ALLOWS” read a bright and bold flier taped to the door to the Godlove-September axion dark matter lab, made even bolder and brighter by Aria’s choice to write it in the world’s thickest, pinkest sharpie. Mako rolled his eyes at it and tried his keycard against the pad anyways. He rolled his eyes again when the indicator flashed red. No Makos allowed. There was a perfectly good reason he wasn’t allowed in the lab anymore, Mako could admit most days, but today was totally different. 

“A-RI-A,” Mako shouted at the door, “let me in! AuDy’s out of the office and you know I can’t focus on relic density calculations without someone to bother!” 

When Aria didn’t immediately open the door, Mako knew his only remaining option was to pound his little blue fists on the lab door until she did. It took less than a minute of the most annoying rhythms he could muster for the entrance to finally expand; however, it was not Aria Joie, clad in whatever military surplus she had embellished with sequins and satin, who now stood in the doorway, glaring down at Mako. Instead, it was Cass. Mostly known for being the group’s grumpiest grad student, Cassander Timaeus Berenice - or Cass, as Mako liked to call them - had more reason than most to want to keep Mako out of the lab. The Incident that had resulted in his banishment had not only set the experiment’s construction back a year, but set Cass’ thesis back as well. Had it not been for Mako’s clumsiness, Cass would be graduating this year; now, they’ll be graduating next year, same as Mako and Aria. 

In a part of his heart that he insists is very, very, very tiny but is, in fact, too large for his area of research, Mako is not sorry about this at all. 

“Aria isn’t here,” Cassander said. They stood exactly in the middle of the doorway, blocking Mako from worming his way in. 

Mako put on his best casual smile and turned on the charm. “Cass! Great to see you! How’s the set-up going? Ready to finally take some data?” Or maybe he didn’t turn on the charm. 

At the allusion to The Incident, Cassander’s ever-stern face seemed to turn even sterner. “Aria isn’t here,” they repeated, practically throwing the words, “and, unlike her, I’m not going to let you mess things up in here.” 

“Cass, please!” Mako tried. “I promise I won’t touch anything. Except a chair and a table. And maybe some pens, if there are any around. Oh, and Lab Snacks! Are there any Lab Snacks left? Maryland - Professor September - said there was a new shipment of parts in this morning and that means Lab Snacks!” 

A groan was all that Cass responded with. 

“Look, listen, Maryland - Professor September - told me to have the relic density graphs done for tomorrow, but they’re so boring and hard, so I need someone to talk at while I do them, which is usually AuDy, but they had to go visit Cene for some maintenance and then it was just me, all alone, with this calculation, which, did I mention, is very boring? But also very important, you know. If I don’t calculate the parameter space, we can’t pick which resonance to start taking data at and then we might as well not even take any data, so forget about a year, your thesis will be pushed back indefinitely, and then you’ll never graduate and you’ll have to listen to me talk for the rest of forever!” 

At some point in his babbling, Cassander stepped away from the door frame, dropping their head into a slightly webbed palm to sigh, and Mako made his entrance. He was on the hunt for those Lab Snacks. Fortunately for him, Professor Godlove kept his lab unrealistically organized. The whiteboards lining the near wall are divided into “Blank until they need to be used and then be sure to erase them afterwards, thank you” and “the list of all the names we gave the parts of our detector because it’s more fun to ask Vera Rubin’s performance is than it is to ask about SQUID B’s.” Next to the whiteboards was a printout of Mako’s Spacetagram profile picture with “Do Not Let This Man Touch The Cavity” printed below it in more pink Sharpie. On the opposite wall were banks of computers and the entrance to the clean room, where the cavity was safe from Mako’s mistakes. For now. The wall in front of Mako would have had windows if it wasn’t in the basement of the physics building but did have the desks and the chairs and the pens and the snacks that Mako was looking for. 

In another stroke of luck for Mako, Cass didn’t seem to be working in the clean room today, but rather took a seat in front of the computer banks with their laptop, testing connections. Mako and his snacks take a seat, knowing Cass is there to bother while he works, and gets to it. The scattering amplitude wasn’t that hard to calculate, Mako conceded, but his brain just works a lot better with someone there to listen as he talks himself through the steps. And Cass’ occasional hums of agreement, murmurs of confusion, and exasperated “And this is why I don’t do theory”s certainly helped. 

Well, they helped Mako not be bored. They did not help him be focused. 

\---

Being alone in the lab with Mako was fine. Totally fine. Totally, completely, perfectly, absolutely, certainly fine, Cass lied to themself. Everything was great. They had tested the same wire five times now, and forgotten the result every single time, but that was fine. More time in the lab. With Mako. Alone. 

But it wasn’t just that it was them and Mako, alone. It was that it was them and Mako, alone, while Mako talked to himself, and argued with himself about algebra mistakes, and congratulated himself on getting through a tricky integral. Absolutely none of which Cass found adorable or endearing, they lied to themself some more. 

Cass had every reason to hate Mako. That’s what everyone else in the collaboration assured them, repeatedly stating their support for “Cass’ Side” in The Incident. And they did hate him, and his stupid face, and his smart brain, and his babbling, and his delicate fingers twirling his pen as he mumbled about Feyman parameters, Cass lied even more, which was the correct and proper response to someone who had kept them from graduating and having to return to Apostolos for another year. Truly a tragedy. This wasn’t a lie, but internal sarcasm, which one might consider to be a form of internal honesty. 

The real tragedy was that they had tested the connection a sixth time and actually remembered the result long enough to record it. This being the last connection they had to test today meant that it was time for Cass to leave and, with no one there to make sure he didn’t destroy anything, time for Mako to leave as well. But Mako seemed to be in a flow, like a fog of equations was drifting around him until one was needed and plucked from the air and then driven into the page in short, quick strokes of Mako’s tiny, sloppy handwriting. 

Mako’s calculation wasn’t, as he had previously suggested, crucial to the continuation of the project. Cass knew that Dr. September was certainly also doing the same math, so the two could check each other. Still, Cass hesitated to interrupt. 

When it was just them and Aria in the lab, Aria would play the latest song she was working on her current album obsession. The lab would be loud, energetic, and a little frantic as Aria danced from station to station, capable only of working to the beat. When Orth was in the lab, everything was all business, strictly professional. Cass always felt like Orth’s every question was a secret test of their worthiness. Cass finds themself standing at attention when Orth stops by to check on their progress and has, on more than one occasion, called Orth “sir.” Orth keeps calling them Mx. Pelagios. When Maritime and the other undergraduates are working, Cass reverts to the stiffness of their undergraduate pre-med program, careful about every word and move, determined to be a perfect role model and leader, a dutiful child, a monument. The undergrads all call them Cassander, never Cass. 

Somehow, despite his nervous energy, Mako brought a relaxation to the lab that Cass hadn’t felt since Koda finished their postdoctoral fellowship and moved on to “finding a real job.” His mumblings about scattering amplitudes and four-momenta turned to tides of long forgotten quantum field theory that soothed Cass’ mind like the waves on Apostolos lapped at their feet. The scratch of pen on paper made a neat beat that brought the lab out of a lonely silence but that didn't make it too loud or draining. Mako ran a blue hand through messy, bleached blonde hair and Cass finally realized that they’d been staring at Mako for way too long and they wrere going to be late to call Sokrates. 

They cleared their throat. 

Mako, Eidolons damn him, didn’t notice. Cass sighed, weighed their options, walked up to Mako as loudly as they could without actually stomping, and tapped him on the shoulder. Mako almost fell out of his chair, which meant that Cass almost caught him, but - thankfully? regrettably? - Mako righted himself at the last second and stood on his own two feet, swaying only slightly. 

“Oops,” he said, sheepishly smiling up at Cass. 

Cass didn’t know how to respond to that, so they didn’t. “I have to leave.” 

“Oh, sure, don’t worry about me, I’ll look after the lab while you’re gone.” Cass had only just started to roll their eyes when Mako continued, “I’m just kidding! I know I’m not supposed to be in here and I’m super not supposed to be in here alone. I’m almost done with the calculation anyways; I’ll finish up the rest tomorrow morning.” 

“Is that a good idea?” Cass asked. While Cass and Mako didn’t know each other particularly well, everyone in the department knew about Mako’s inability to keep a normal sleep schedule. Not that Cass was concerned about him. 

“It’s the best idea,” Mako said in a way that made Cass absolutely certain that it wasn’t. 

But Cass had to go, they reminded themself, which meant Mako had to go. They made a stiff gesture toward the door and gave Mako a feeble shrug, which he took the meaning of. They walked to the door together, then down the hall together, then up the stairs and out of the building together, in an awkward silence that persisted halfway across the quad until Mako’s path finally diverged from theirs.

“Well,” Mako said, a certain chipperness in his voice that felt forced, but not for the reason Cass was thinking of. “Guess this is goodbye.” 

“Bye.” Cass gave a curt nod, turned, and left before Mako had the chance to say anything else that they didn’t know how to respond to. 

When they could be completely confident that they were not only out of earshot of Mako but also out of his line of sight, Cass picked up their phone and dialed their favorite middle sibling. “Sokrates,” they said, a little too quickly when they answered the phone, “I’ve decided that actually I will be coming to Apostolos this weekend for your Welcome Back party. I need a break from the lab and the school and…” They trailed off for a moment, trying to think of something other than “not being able to talk to my crush.” “And yeah,” they settled on. “I’m very excited to see you.”


	2. A Physicist is a Machine that Inputs Coffee and Outputs Equations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My adviser often says that a physicist is a machine that inputs coffee and outputs equations. He really means that a theorist is a machine that inputs coffee and outputs equations. I don't know what experimentalists do exactly, but they're stronger than any marine.

If Mako was being kind to himself - which he almost never was - he would have told September that he did his best and would finish the rest of the graphs after the meeting. Seeing as how he was himself and only himself, forever, he woke at 3 a.m. on Lazer Ted’s floor, having fallen off the couch in the night, to an alarm that he really shouldn’t have set. That didn’t stop him from getting up, stealing Lazer Ted’s last bagel, borrowing his toothbrush, and catching the first Starlight Straight of the day to campus. The Constellation Coffee in the Rethal-Adax Commemorative Library even gave him his morning heart attack of a six-shot, extra-caramel latte without lecturing him about his health. By 3:44 a.m., Mako was sitting in his office chair, wrapped in a blanket, having a very heated negotiation with Mathematica’s Solve [1] function between sips of overly-sweetened espresso and milk. By 4:28 a.m., he gave up and switched to MATLAB. Alternating between physically typing and fogging his laptop while shoving handfuls of mini M&Ms in his mouth, Mako managed to get the last of the graphs rendered and beautifully labeled - always label your graphs, kids - by 8:29 a.m., a full minute before AuDy arrived. 

“If I have to sit through another one of Maryland’s lectures about your health, I will kick you out of the office,” AuDy said as they sat down at the desk across from Mako. They clearly weren’t buying that the black under his eyes was just a new eyeshadow trend. 

AuDy’s desk was nowhere near as tidy as everyone else in the collaboration speculated. They kept random bits of hardware, displayed like sculptures, and a little robotic dog-spider as decoration. The whiteboard behind them always had a few stray marks, which seemed to only bother Mako. They rarely wrote in pencil, but always had two or five scattered around in case the mood struck them. No, AuDy’s desk was not particularly clean, but compared to Mako’s, it was downright pristine. 

“She’s totally not going to notice,” Mako replied. He scoffed. The scoff turned into a combination of a yawn and a cough which almost caused him to lose all of the caffeine and chocolate he’d ingested. “I’m fine.” 

The number one most important part of Mako’s physics setup was the mini fridge under his desk. It was always empty, save for a bottle of Space Sauce and an ice pack, but it was still the most important. On the top of the bookshelf in the corner of the room, Mako had an impressive stack of empty Constellation Coffee cups that AuDy kept trying to get him get rid of, especially after the time they all got knocked off the shelf and Mako took that as an opportunity to sort them instead of dispose of them [2]. There was a drawer full of chocolate and dry-erase pens, a drawer for research binders and large bag of chips that didn’t fit in the first drawer, and a drawer for very pretty office supplies that he never used. Taped to ever vertical surface in his line of sight were various summary tables and equation cheat sheets and Mathematica’s “clear all” command. The desk itself had open textbooks, a pile of scrap paper for messing up algebra, a pile of scrap paper for getting algebra right, a pile of scrap paper for algebra that he couldn’t remember if it had come out right or wrong, and more piles of papers with equations and words and meeting notes and ideas and toy codes and to-do lists scribbled on them in a rainbow of pen colors. 

“I’ll even help you with the coffee cups.” AuDy stood up from their desk and stacked their papers neatly. It was 8:58 a.m., which meant it was time for them to head over to Maryland’s office to report. 

For Mako, it meant it was time to rummage through his many paper piles to find the ones he needed and then run after his companion. 

Mako did not end up getting kicked out of his and AuDy’s shared office, not that day at least, because Maryland was in too much of a state of her own to notice Mako’s. Before AuDy and Mako could take their seats in the mismatched armchairs of her office, Maryland was already off on a rant about her latest article and the tedious, frustrating peer-review process. They didn’t look it, but Mako knew AuDy well enough to guess that this was just as tedious to them as Maryland’s concern Mako’s wellbeing. 

“And here we are, nine months later! Suffice it to say, we won’t be submitting to JHEP [3] for a while and you can bet that if they send me an article to review, I’ll let them know exactly where they can shove it,” Maryland said, concluding her rant just as the coffee maker on her desk dinged to signal that it was finished. She poured herself a fresh cup in a "Galaxy's Okayest Mom" mug and offered her students some. Mako accepted while AuDy declined, trying to get them back on task. 

“I have completed my calculation of the direct detection cross-section and have found that our proposed mass and coupling are not excluded by SuperCDMS’s bounds.” 

Maryland took the papers AuDy handed her, giving them only a cursory glance and comparing them to her own results, pulled up on one of the three monitors on her desk. “Checks out,” she said, handing back to them. “Excellent work as usual. Next step is to write it up neatly for the article and then it’ll be time to focus on your thesis, full-time.” Maryland gave AuDy a proud but not overly emotional smile and turned her attention to Mako. “And how’s the relic density of the universe working out?” 

After a quick and careful study of his PhD advisor's expression and posture - along with a quick brain hack of her recent internet history - Mako determined that Maryland was in a chill as hell mood and decided to lean into his annoy-AuDy nature. He began to shuffle his graphs like cards. Well, he attempted to, but he hadn’t printed them on card stock this time and it wasn’t really working out. It was making Maryland work extremely hard not to laugh and AuDy work even harder not to instantly kill him, so, in that sense, it was having the intended effect. AuDy’s patience did not last long. Rather than Makocide, however, they chose to snatch the papers from Mako and pass them to Maryland. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Maryland said, taking the papers and looking over them. After a minute of much more careful checking, she said, “Yup these look great, too. 

“Mako,” she said, turning to him with a positively Mako-ish glint in her eyes, “what’s an axion?” 

Mako felt himself straighten up against his will. His mind raced for 8 seconds with “Is this a test is this a test is this a test” before he steadied himself, smiled, and replied. “It’s a theoretical particle that was first proposed as an addition to the Standard Model in order to clean up some messiness in quantum chromodynamics, but it’s still of interest because it makes a very nice candidate for dark matter.” 

Maryland smiled. “And why are we so interested in dark matter?” 

Her voice had a certain playfulness to it that Mako didn’t like. She was setting something up, but he couldn’t figure out what, so he continued forward, cautiously. “Because we have a very nice theory - the Standard Model - that does a very, very good job of prediction very, very many things but we also have very, very good evidence that the universe is very, very full of dark matter, which is not covered at all in the Standard Model.” 

There was a beat. AuDy drummed their fingers on the desk. 

“Excellent!” Maryland finally said. “Well put. Now, Mako? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve never written an introduction for an article we’ve published, have you?” 

Mako drew his “No,” out as long as he could, until he finally, finally realized where she was going with this. “I’m writing the intro for this article.” 

“You’re writing the intro for this article!”

“He’s writing the intro for this article?” 

Maryland waved away AuDy’s dismissive tone. “AuDy’s graduating soon and it’s time you stepped up! And I think you’re going to do a great job. Have something for me by Monday? I’ll tell Doctor Frowny to have his people email you their results.” 

There were extraordinarily few times in his life Mako Trig found himself at a loss.jpg for words and this certainly wasn’t one of them, but all the words were swears and he was physically incapable of swearing in front of Maryland, so he said nothing. AuDy said nothing, not wanting to prolong the meeting. Maryland said nothing, waiting for some form of acknowledgement from Mako. 

Instead, it came from AuDy. “Sounds good. He’ll do it.” 

Maryland smiled and AuDy dragged Mako out of her office. 

Mako slumped into his chair and began knocking his head against his desk. Talking was fine, talking was good, he was great at talking. He was charming and goofy and fun and great with words when they were spoken out loud. That did not translate well to writing. 

AuDy grabbed him by the hair and forced him to stop physically taking the stress out on himself. “You’re going to be fine. It’s not hard. Just explain some key concepts. If it’s really troubling you…” They paused. For an excruciatingly long time. “... email me and I will help you.” 

A soft, genuine smile spread across Mako’s face. “Thank you, AuDy. I don’t know what I’m going to do when you graduate.” 

“Just don’t sabotage my thesis and maybe I’ll still be friends with you.” They let Mako go. 

He took a few deep breaths. “I need caffeine, want to go to Constellation?” 

“I don’t drink coffee, Mako,” AuDy informed him and began working. 

“They have things other than coffee!” 

AuDy gestured to their complete lack of mouth, face, and head. “I don’t drink anything, Mako.” 

“You can still, like, hang out.” 

AuDy didn’t answer, having exceeded their ability to put up with Mako for the day, so he sent his roller chair flying to the door with kick off of his desk, stumbling out of it at high speed and barely catching himself on the frame. He strode out confidently only to slink back in half a minute later, having forgotten his wallet. As he walked to the library, he pulled up the Mesh in his head and tried to call Aria, but all he got in response was a text.

axion joy: talking 2 cute applied science gurl, ttyl

\---

The Constellation Coffee in the Rethal-Adax Commemorative Library was open late and right next to the physics building and those were the only two positive things anyone in the physics department had ever said about it. They served an “Apostolosian” roast, which Cass had actually tried to have them remove or, at least, rename on the basis of being anti-Apostolosian propaganda. Their scones were terrible. Their bagels were worse. The lights flickered and the seats were uncomfortable, and, somehow, it was always too loud and too crowded. 

Cass was there anyways, drinking the mediocre coffee and debugging some code one of the undergraduates had written as the morning grew late. It was uncommented [4], of course, and inefficient, but Cass had promised to help Territory Jazz Jr. out and maybe seeing a nice, pretty code, with all the proper explanations would help. They hoped so. 

Physicists are not computer scientists. Many can go their entire undergraduate careers without being taught how to properly code and, thus, pick up all their programming skills from other physicists’ terrible code, stack exchange questions, and brute force. They worked, and that was usually all that could be said of them. Territory’s code was full of redundancies and an excessive use of loops that slowed the code down dramatically. When they had first received it, it took over three minutes to run, which Cass found entirely unacceptable. The three different variables labeled with three different key smashes were even worse. 

Sighing and closing their laptop, Cass resolved to take a break. There was only so long they could edit before their notes started getting snippy and they had reached that point. Coming out of the focus of work, the noise of the café hit them with full force, stunning them for a moment as their senses readjusted to the world around them. 

Which was when they noticed Mako Trig in line for coffee. Their eyes met across the sea of undergrads and Cass, much to their deep regret, stared. 

The thing about Mako was that he wasn't super attractive by human or Apostolosian standards. His young body was almost frail, the bags under his eyes very sharply contrasted his pale blue skin, he looked like a strong breeze could knock him over, and his spikey blonde hair did not get redyed often enough. But there was something about him that Cass couldn’t stop thinking about. His nervous eyes had a particular sparkle, a perfect mixture of devious and brilliant that shone like a supernova, exploding out and obliterating Cass with their energy. He had long, delicate fingers that were often on display as he often gesticulated while talking and he often talked. His style was abominable, but he wore each disastrous outfit with such confidence and pride that worked in a way that no one else could possibly pull off. Everything about Mako Trig was entirely his own; he was unowned, unburdened, and unafraid. 

Not that Cass was attracted to that unflinching confidence. No, not in the least. They were staring at Mako across the café because they were in no way infatuated with him and they simply making themself aware of the presence of one of their collaborators. So they stared as he filled up his mug, dumped a blasphemous amount of sugar and cream and cocoa powder and honey into said mug, and then walking toward Cass. This was the point when they noticed that they had waved him over. 

“Cass!” 

Mako stood in front of the Cass’ table with his drink in his hand. Cass, still unable to form words, felt their hand motion against their will yet again, gesturing for Mako to take a seat. He did.

“Thanks.” 

There was a very long pause. 

“So, what’s up with dark energy, huh?” 

“Can we please not talk about dark energy [5]? I don’t understand it and it upsets me.” Cass shifted in their chair, trying to figure out what exactly they had just done. 

“Mood.” Mako usually babbled. He talked and rambled and he did it very well. He didn’t just fill up silence with pointless words; he painted it. But, in this awkward moment - the second that they had shared in two days time - Mako failed to live up to his chatty persona. 

Cass watched as Mako began to bite his lower lip and their heart sank like COUNTER/Weight’s gravitational acceleration had just increased tenfold in that one particular location. They tried not to take it personally, but it still stung. Mako Trig was charismatic, magnetic, and bubbly around everyone but them. They didn’t know why they had stared at Mako, the didn’t know why they had waved at him, they didn’t know why they had asked him to join them, and they definitely didn’t know what to say. 

“So, um,” Mako mumbled, his discomfort now being taken out on his cuticles instead of his lip. 

Okay, maybe Cass didn’t hate Mako, they thought, still so phenomenally far from the mark, but, admittedly, a step in the right direction. But Mako sure hated Cass, they pretended to be absolutely certain of. As was probably justified, from his perspective, since he certainly thought Cass hated him. This was a notion that was extremely hard for Cass to correct, because it would require tell Mako that they didn’t hate them and they had a very unjustifiable fear that such a sentence would come out not as “I don’t hate you” but as “I’m in love with you,” even though they most definitely were not in love with him, lied the liar. It was a random and unexplainable paranoia. 

“Do you know that Maryland sometimes calls Orth ‘Doctor Frowny?’” Mako blurted out, halting Cass’ internal computer. 

“She. What?” 

“Not to his face!” Mako said with a laugh that forced Cass to put their hands to their face and cover their blush. “At least, I hope she doesn’t call him that to his face? Or maybe it’s cooler if she does. I wonder if she has dumb nicknames for all the professors! I wonder if she has a cool nickname for me?” 

“No, no, no, no. Back up. What does Dr. September call my PhD advisor?” 

And then Mako was laughing. Not a singular laugh, but multiple. “She calls him Doctor Frowny! In front of AuDy and I, during meetings. Oh, and once in an email.” 

Cass forgot their need to cover their blushing cheeks and crossed their arms over their chest. “There’s no way I’m going to believe that.” 

“Oh, don’t worry: I took a screenshot.” 

Mako pulled out his phone, fiddled with it for a moment, and then presented it to Cass. Sure enough, there was an email from one galaxy-renowned Doctor Maryland September, to one campus-Mako Trig, tell him that she’d “pass that along to Doctor Frowny.” Cass stared at the image, mouth agape. 

“No,” they said. “No way.”

“This image is certified, 100% not doctored!” Mako insisted. “I promise that I could not make this up!” 

Cass mulled this over for a moment. “I don’t know, I wouldn’t put it past you.” 

“Then don’t!” 

The incredibly strange sound of a laugh came out of Cass, which almost made them jump. It was such a natural, light laugh, a noise that they hadn’t made since - well, since all their siblings still lived together. This was totally, totally fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will not accept any criticism of my characterization of Maryland September. She's my mom now. 
> 
> [1] I still don’t know how to intelligently introduce assumptions in Mathematica and it haunts me.   
[2] Based on a real story about a guy in my office, but with Arizona Ice Tea cans. I’m writing this in the office, so I went to check if they’re still there, and let me tell you: they are. They all are.   
[3] Journal of High Energy Physics knows what they did.   
[4] Always comment your code.   
[5] The first rule of high energy physics is to make peace with the fact that you don't understand dark energy. 
> 
> Also if anyone knows how to typeset equations on ao3, please hit me up. I have some jokes in coming chapters that rely on them.

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to be doing a dark matter relic density calculation but it was hard and boring so I wrote this instead. 
> 
> I'm Tangereen. Come say hi on Twitter @TVBClaringbold


End file.
